


While Your Eyes Are Closed

by mckendie



Category: Haikyuu!!
Genre: Arranged Marriage, Basilisks, Blind Character, Mentioned Near Death Experiences, Multi, Semi "he's my best friend" Eita, non-binary Semi, who totally does not have a thing for princes
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-10-30
Updated: 2017-10-30
Packaged: 2019-01-26 10:54:22
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,342
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12555864
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/mckendie/pseuds/mckendie
Summary: Semi Eita makes an executive decision after meeting Tendou Satori and fighting off an infestation that threatens their best friend's wedding.They need to stop falling in love with princes.





	While Your Eyes Are Closed

**Author's Note:**

> i'm really bummed i didn't get to finish the big stuff (tm) but the next chapters will be posted soon!  
> (aka writing out of order finally came around to bite me in the ass)

Eita had sat at the youngest prince's right hand since he was six, orphaned and welcomed into the castle as an apprentice. They had been tutored together, heads bowed close as Eita read the pages aloud for Wakatoshi, slow and mispronounced but recited with a smile. They had waited at the edge of the courtyard when Wakatoshi had to practice fighting, quiet, with their eyes closed, trying to see as Wakatoshi did. The shuffle of feet across the dusty floor and the whistle of wooden practice blades slicing through the air bounced too easily off the castle's stone walls for it to work.

Wakatoshi had always been there for them, the only other child their age on the grounds.

“I'm getting married,” Wakatoshi had told them while they were relaxing in the garden, back to back, sheltered by walls of hedges. The flowers had been in full bloom.

Eita had felt like they couldn't breath, reminded of how Ushijima had described having the wind knocked out of him during his lessons with the wooden practice swords.

They held no illusions that the king hadn’t arranged this, just as they held no illusions that Wakatoshi would follow his father's word until the day he died, loyal to a fault.

“Where are they from?” the congratulations was unspoken but there, and they grinned, feeble and half-hearted, but leaking into their voice enough that Wakatoshi wouldn't bother to question them.

Somehow, in that moment, the prospect of marriage seemed like a goodbye.

 

* * *

 

Tendou Satori was tall, thin, and almost as regal as Wakatoshi when he swept into the throne room with an accompaniment of advisors and servants.

Something icy and bitter had twisted in Eita’s gut as they narrowed their eyes, peering at the man's fiery hair and pale skin, dotted with freckles to match the ones Wakatoshi gained in the heat of summer.

They tapped lightly at Wakatoshi's shoulder, a brush of their pinky against the thin fabric of his tunic. He leaned into the touch before standing, Eita just behind him as he set off down the stairs.

Tendou immediately perked up when they approached, Eita noticed, so they brushed against Wakatoshi again and whispered for only the two of them to hear, “he looks happy to see you.”

The smile that graced Wakatoshi’s face, almost small enough to miss, made Eita’s heart thud to a stop in its tracks.

It looked like the quiet warmth of their workshop’s fireplace, the garden hewn with stepping stones that would never lead to the little niche surrounded by hedges they knew as well as the back of their hand.

It looked like home.

They tugged at Wakatoshi's sleeve to stop him, a few feet away from their visitors.

Tendou’s eyes were wide and a little star struck as he stared at Wakatoshi like he was something golden and beautiful, and Eita knew they had stared at him the same way, hidden in the sprawling afternoon shadows that cloaked them behind the hedges.

 

* * *

 

“Balls are fancy and elegant and graceful,” Wakatoshi had whispered, “everything I am not.”

They had faced each other on a bed too big for two ten year olds, foreheads almost touching, legs overlapping.

Eita could remember laughing, Wakatoshi’s confused face a little too close to their own. “If you are inelegant than I must be lower than the rats in the dungeon.”

Wakatoshi had laughed, eyes closed as he reached out to Eita. His fingers settled on their shoulders, brushing over the soft fabric gently.

“As inelegant as a winter storm,” was Wakatoshi’s reply, sincere as he always was.

 

* * *

 

Eita was leaving Wakatoshi’s room when a hand snagged their arm, grip tight and terrifying until they spotted their assailant, grinning sheepishly, red hair slumped halfway in his face. 

Tendou Satori looked like something out of the storybooks Eita had been read when they were just a little kid, the image of the cunning prince complete in his long, lanky build and the faint gleam in his eyes. Once they were well away from Wakatoshi’s rooms, bowed down into a tight corner that Eita was surprised Tendou had found as fast as he had, Tendou released their arm, the same, almost ashamed grin slipping onto his lips as he brushed his hair out of his face.

“So, you’re Eita?” he asked, smile turning sly and mischievous, and, as much as Eita loathed to admit it, almost charming, “Wakatoshi’s best friend?”

“Yes, since we were children.”

The relief on Tendou’s face was near tangible, and the tense line of his shoulders relaxed some. “Oh thank whatever god you praise,” he sighed, “would you mind helping me plan a surprise before the wedding for Wakatoshi?”

Eita nodded, touched that this man who’d barely even met their best friend was willing to go to such lengths. “Of course.” 

 

* * *

 

Dinner had just been served when the messenger had rushed in, a letter clutched tightly in his fist, half crumpled and stained with red clay that matched the smears along the messenger’s knees. Without a word he thrust his hand out towards Wakatoshi’s father, bouncing on the balls of his feet. 

He wasted no time breaking the seal, skimming over the words briefly before nodding to the messenger. “We will send someone to take care of the situation,” he promised, “ thank you for your hast.”

With a nod the boy dashed away, the great doors slamming behind him.

Eita felt a strange sense of foreboding, a coiling sense of dread when the king turned his gaze to Wakatoshi. They leaned a little closer to the prince, to comfort him or themself they weren’t sure.

“I’m sorry Satori, but my son is going to have to leave the castle for a few days to deal with a minor infestation in one of our farms,” the king’s voice was carefully measured, but everyone knew what an infestation meant.

Wakatoshi’s fingers twitched at his side, brushing against his thigh where Eita had treated a bite the year before. “How many have been recorded?” he asked, back uncomfortably straight, and muscles a little too tense.

Two seats down Tendou’s confusion radiated off him, though no one deigned him with an explanation.

The king looked unsure, his stoic façade wavering minutely. “Apparently, most of the season’s neolates were killed, but the main nest found the soldiers before they could report back.” To his left Wakatoshi’s mother paled.

Eita hesitated a split second before leaning forward to peer past Wakatoshi towards his parents. “I can accompany him. Shirabu and I just finished a poison that should be able to eliminate them by nest if used correctly.”

An hour later dinner was over and Wakatoshi and them where sent to pack, only for Tendou to snag their arm again as they veered towards their workshop, where the soot stained walls and the acrid scent of burning banana leaves would be a small comfort before the impending trip.

His expression still screamed confusion, barely covering up his concern. “ _What’s going on?_ ” he hissed under his breath eyes darting around to spot anyone that might overhear him. Eita dimly wondered where the paranoia had sprung from.

“In the spring the basilisks hatch and start wreaking havoc on the crops. One almost killed Ushijima last year, and when he was a baby, before I met him.” Eita shivered, remembered hearing word of the youngest prince being blinded by a basilisk’s venom when they were barely five, still living with their mother and father. Then, almost a year ago, the new terror of struggling to keep his best friend from succumbing to the snake’s poison in the cold confines of his workshop.

Tendou only seemed more confused, barely keeping pace with Eita, so they elaborated. “Basilisks are serpents whose gaze and breath can kill almost as effectively as their poison. They're what parents use to keep their children in check when they get a little too adventurous, because if it blinded the youngest prince and left him half dead sixteen years later, imagine what it could do to you.”


End file.
